Nepal Postal Service faces manpower crunch

KATHMANDU, August 21: The Nepal Postal Service (NPS) is facing a serious manpower crunch, but still managing to deliver parcels and letters on time.

“We´re delivering the parcels and letters on time,” Lok Prasad Acharya, Director General of Postal Services Department said.


But vehicular obstruction due to bandhs and other factors are affecting timely delivery, Acharya said.

NPS does not have its own vehicle to transport letters and parcels. As a result, it has to rely on long route public vehicles for delivering their services. When those vehicles are obstructed due to bandhs or some form of accidents, timely delivery of parcels is affected.

The postal service is supposed to have the strength of 20,000 staff . However, there are only 16,800 employees. The total number includes 10,500 part time employees. Currently, the post office has 3,200 vacant posts. For some of the posts, the postal service has been hiring employees on contract basis, Acharya said.

Furthermore, with the World Wide Web boom, internet has become a popular means of communication. This instant send-receive service of emails has affected postal service to some extent.

“Its not that people have completely stopped sending letters through postal services,” Acharya said. “The number of people sending letters has decreased to some extent due to the advanced telecommunication.” However, people still use the service for sending and receiving parcels, Acharya said. In order to keep itself functioning, NPS has also started to operate other services like money transfer, remittance, tele-center, and e-post.

According to the 2009 annual report, NPS generated a revenue of Rs 200,000,000, Rs 9,608,912 more than that of 2008. In 2008 AD, NPS had generated around Rs 195,000,000.
Nepal Postal Service, formerly known as General Post Office was established in 1878 AD. Currently NPS has five regional head offices, 70 district post offices, 3996 post offices throughout the country.

Source: http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=22400